<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Losing strength',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<img src="/y.st./source/y.st./static/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0/minetest.net./weblog/2018/03/14.png" alt="The site of the tower that will reach up from the ocean floor" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="600"/>
	<p>
		While building adapting code from Minetest Game&apos;s furnace to build <code>renew</code>&apos;s stone grinder, I ran into a surprise issue.
		Furnaces have been reconfigured to disallow use when in protected areas.
		That means that the building of public furnace rooms is disallowed unless the furnace room allows players to destroy the room if they choose.
		My initial tower designated one of the twelve floors as a public furnace room, but I guess the room was unusable.
		Because my grinders are so similar to furnaces (sharing much of the same code even), they should behave the same way for consistency.
		That&apos;s disappointing as well.
		I was hoping to designate another room as a grinder room.
		I might add a flag that allows individual grinders to be set to allow use by outsiders, but then again, that&apos;d be odd, since the furnace doesn&apos;t have that same option, so I might not.
	</p>
	<p>
		I finished the code for <code>renew</code>, so I thought I&apos;d release it right away.
		That&apos;s not going to happen though.
		I&apos;ll need to play in a world long enough to encounter the new obsidian ores so I can get one of the screenshots for the release post.
		In any case, I was able to get my new world started today, and I even set up the new $a[HUD] for it.
		I&apos;ve rolled the $a[HUD] into another mod I&apos;ve got, one specifically for my world.
		For legacy reasons, the mod&apos;s called <code>10</code>.
		Initially, the only thing it did was bump the number of items in the hot bar from eight up to ten (hence the name), but now also handles the custom $a[HUD] and some code for making the inventory menu not so dark.
		VanessaE says opening the menu in Minetest Game makes her feel like she&apos;s living in a cave, which she doesn&apos;t like.
		I don&apos;t quite get the cave vibe myself, but the pointless darkness certainly is a pain at times, and I&apos;ve never once seen an advantage for it.
	</p>
	<p>
		With the <code>semicreative</code> mod no longer necessary, I&apos;ve removed it, which somewhat changes the gameplay, and thus, my strategy.
		I can&apos;t stack items nearly as high as I could in the last iteration of the world, which means my first goal needs to be to set up a permanent, or at least semi-permanent, base of operations.
		Before, I could move between based in only a couple trips, but now, it&apos;ll take several.
		I need a place I can stash stuff and not need to likely ever move it.
		The base of the secondary tower was previously unused, but now, it can serve as my home.
		That tower base is ... underwater.
		My first task was to gather enough pine needles to cover the ceiling of my home so the water wouldn&apos;t rush in as I hollow the place out.
	</p>
	<p>
		This mountain is a pain.
		My first days in this world are never much fun.
		Hopefully this will be the final iteration and I won&apos;t need to start again for any reason.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The two libraries that the university offers access to are not functional for this assignment.
			One of them denies me access due to an authentications failure, so I don&apos;t know what that library contains.
			The other always turns up zero search results if I tell it I want a research paper.
			I don&apos;t even care too much what the paper is about, as long as it&apos;s a research paper, as that&apos;ll mean it likely provides the abstract needed for this assignment.
			However, it only turns up results if I don&apos;t tell it what kind of resource to locate, at which point it offers only journal articles and book chapters, neither of which have abstracts.
			The requirement that we use a specific library like this instead of the general Web is incredibly limiting and sets us up for failure.
			I&apos;m sure with a real search engine, this library would have what we need.
			However, because this library is a walled garden, search engines can&apos;t index it, so we&apos;re left with only the library&apos;s own, clearly-broken, internal search engine.
			I&apos;m at a loss as to what to do.
		</p>
		<p>
			In an effort to have <strong>*something*</strong> to discuss, I turned to the University of Wisconsin, who provides <a href="https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/presentations_abstracts_examples.html">several example abstracts</a>.
			I&apos;m sorry that this doesn&apos;t meet the assignment criteria, but it&apos;s the best I could do, and the requirement that the abstract that we choose be from the partner library of this school is, quite frankly, completely arbitrary.
		</p>
		<p>
			I read the abstract for Biogeography of Chemical Defense in Birch Trees.
			As the name of the paper implies, the abstract it includes discusses the chemical defences of a species of tree from different geographical regions, which will be compared in the greater paper.
			Specifically, the amount of chemical defence the trees have based on their latitude is compared, using trees grown from seed samples taken from different ecosystems in Canada.
			I don&apos;t think I&apos;ll write my abstract up in quite the same style, personally.
			It&apos;d probably read well in a community of scientists, but I found it a bit slow to read and I don&apos;t think it would catch the attention of a broader audience.
			As the target audience of my paper is the general public, my abstract will need to attempt to catch the attention of the everyday layman.
			It&apos;s hard to fault this abstract because it has to pack so much information into so little space, but it also feels like it doesn&apos;t explain anything.
			It says the birch trees are suspected of having better defences in climates closer to the equator because insects try to eat the trees (Brown &amp; Stevens, n.d.).
			However, that means the trees are suspected of having lower defences in the climates closer to the poles, where mammals are said to eat the trees.
			So if the trees are still getting eaten further from the equator, why would they be suspected of having lessened defences compared to birches of lower latitudes?
			At a minimum, if I were to change this abstract, I&apos;d include a brief explanation as to why which animal was eating it, mammal or insect, was believed to have an effect on the tree population&apos;s chemical defences.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Brown, S., &amp; Stevens, M. (n.d.). Biogeography of Chemical Defense in Birch Trees. Retrieved from <a href="https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/presentations_abstracts_examples.html"><code>https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/presentations_abstracts_examples.html</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		My mental stability is waning, I think.
		My emotional well-bing isn&apos;t great.
		This English course and its incessant assignments that demand we use the university&apos;s library parters to find random articles that fit various criteria aren&apos;t the cause of my decline, but they&apos;re certainly a huge catalyst for it.
		If the school hadn&apos;t already taken such a toll from me, this&apos;d be no problem.
		I mean, it&apos;d be a pain, but it wouldn&apos;t bring me down so hard.
		I just don&apos;t have the strength for this nonsense from them any more though.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
